Most twenty-somethings spend a lot of time avoiding awkwardness. Not Alexandra Petri. She is a Washington Post columnist and blogger, an International Pun Champion, a playwright, and a Jeopardy! loser, and she’s been on your TV a couple of times. She is also a congressman’s kid, if that will make you talk to her! (Just kidding.) A FIELD GUIDE TO AWKWARD SILENCES is Petri’s hilarious debut essay collection.
Alexandra Petri is a connoisseur of the kind of awkwardness that most people spend whole lifetimes trying to avoid. If John Hodgman and Amy Sedaris had a baby…they would never let Petri babysit it.

Alexandra Petri does all the things we secretly wish we could do ourselves – and maybe things we wouldn’t wish upon our enemies:
•She puts herself on the line auditioning for reality television, for both America’s Got Talent (for which she doesn’t, really, have talent) and America’s Next Top Model (her catwalk and pout can’t convince the judges).
•She wins Pun Championships, but loses Whistling Contests.
•She crashes a dinner celebrating the publication of the International Textbook on Geriatric Care.
•She loses Jeopardy! by answering “Who is that dude?” on national TV.
•She does the things that every woman in her 20s does but with a twist – like trying to fall in love while wearing a Jabba the Hutt costume at a Star Wars convention.
•One time, she let some cult members she met on the street baptize her, just to be polite.

But Petri is here to tell you: Everything you fear is not so bad. Trust her. She’s tried it. And in the course of her misadventures, she’s learned that there are worse things out there than awkwardness—and that interesting things start to happen when you stop caring what people think.